Green Light
by countertime
Summary: They don't love each other. Or maybe they do. Mason and Daisy, and the choices we make.
1. the immediatcy of collision

Author note: I seriously love mason/george fics. I kinda think they're good for each other. But I find mason and daisy deliciously fucked up. The type of fucked up that kinda end up destroying each other but has to happen regardless. Because you know they don't really love each other. Not in any way that could work. But they may actually need each other. Like in a, we shouldn't fuck but im glad you're here to mirror my existence kinda way.

**green light**

He loves her because she's glittering and because what glitters catches the eye- he loves that he can't turn his eyes away and that she will never grow old (it takes the pressure off imagining forever).

He imagines her as every cliché, lips of ruby red and hair like honey silk, and sometimes he cannot remember what is imagined and what is real.

It's a small truth. But an awful one.

And though he tries hard to win her affections, to catch her like a falling star, his love isn't as epic as he proclaims (loudly and, often, in bus terminals).

He does love her. But he's never been in love. The only thing that's in his heart is a desperate cankerous need to breathe, because the high is already wearing off -_and will love tide him over until the next?_

It isn't funny but he can't stop laughing.

Because he can tell she is crumbling already (already?! Two years! Frigid cow). Testing him before she'll give in. And in a life filled with sucker punches, Mason is only dependable as long as the hits keep coming.

And Daisy is a hit wrapped up in a high and when she does come to him, _god help them_.

Because he's never been allowed to have such pretty things.

**green light**

A delicious squint of the eyes.

A clever angle of her neck.

And suddenly she is the picture of winsome gaiety. She's even fooled herself, brilliant little actor that she is (she'll believe it as long as she has an audience).

She is more than pretty. It's her only pride and biggest tragedy (she'll bleed red, try her, but no one will come close enough to see).

Her father was a salesman who traveled too far, her sister gone before she could really learn her, and she is almost angry that she can't point to a single scar (as she schools her laughter once again).

And on this pedestal that the world has placed her, she is too high for them to hear the screams.

Really, she would have fucked Mason ages ago if she didn't suspect that he would be gentle. And when starlets go supernova they want it hard against a wall, something dirty to remind themselves that they aren't porcelain and untouchable.

But Mason doesn't see her as a fuck. And though the pedestal is still there, she likes looking down at him.

And what they have is (almost) real, and god knows, she likes testing her faith.

**green light**

She comes to him like the night.

_Savemesaveme _she whispers with her hands and when they grab at him, at the heart of him, he wonders how he could.

_His evening star, his falling grace._

It's over quicker than it should be. She lingers, and he's not the only one surprised.

He's never seen eyes this blue he thinks, and whatever she asks, the answer is yes.

So yes, he says. Before she asks. Because she should know it too.

She smiles. It's not like her, not like any smile she's worn before.

And in this moment. They're both ok.

_But only for this moment. _

**green light**

There is always a morning after. And she looks less like an angel fallen than she does a girl lost. And wasn't it wicked of the wolf to whisk her further into the woods?

Mason deflates a little. He isn't the wolf in this scenario, and he has no desire to wake her.

There is some chemical reaction that happens with UV and decisions made past 2am and he isn't exempt from the rule, isn't a complete fool. He can see her brushing the whole thing off- a fault in judgement, temporary insanity, a momentary lapse (a mistake, a mistake, a mistake).

His heart is breaking already.

He puts the coffee on. And waits for her to come down.

He is always waiting.

**green light**

There is always a morning after. And he looks less like a fuckup and more and more like something dear- too dear to name.

She feigns sleep as he slips out of bed (watching her, always watching her). And she's irritated at herself because she has already artfully rearranged herself to a more flattering outline (and she won't ever let him really see her).

There are options running thru her head. She is the most accomplished liar and she wonders how she can hurt him best.

Because she doesn't believe in fairytales and ever after is less entertaining when you have eternity to screw it up with (and she may actually care about this one and that seems more fucked up than anything she's ever known).

He doesn't love her. _Not the way she needs. _

He _can't_ love her. _Because she may actually need him to._

She straightens up her hair.

**green light**

He measures his life in grams. It's a curious choice of measurement to anyone who isn't a proclaimed junkie- perhaps it's curious even then. He does have eternity, it could get tiresome. All these pesky little milliseconds.

_But half a gram of coke and the entire world's different._

And Daisy's awake. And Daisy's here. And Daisy is fucking beautiful as she waits for him to say something (though he half expected her to come in talking).

But for once, and ignoring instinct and nerves, he doesn't fill the silence with stupid prattle (thanks to four white pills and two blue-- reaper metabolism).

He instead, only smiles at her.

And waits the bitch out.

**green light**

She doesn't know why she is here.

Not here here, obviously. She had to come out of the bedroom sometime. But here with him. When this was so obviously a bad idea (and daisy falls down the stairs, daisy falls up the stairs).

His grin says 'eat shit' and somehow she was expecting poetry (clumsy and ill delivered, but poetry all the same).

And suddenly, it just seems so damn awful and she isn't sure if she is laughing but the bursts of sound coming from her are hardly controlled.

She just wants to go home, but she isn't sure where that is anymore.

**green light**

She was clearly off her rock. Blind and buggering, reaching for her messiah but there is no salvation in this kingdom or the next.

Only here and now. He was all she had here and now.

_A little piece of mediocrity. Little less than average. Little more than nothing. _

And he wants to weep with her, his girl lost. Because she deserves more (or maybe she doesn't even deserve him). Because this is Daisy. Beautiful Daisy. Who lies with every line of her body to a world who can't recognize that being unemployed doesn't change her occupation.

She is sobbing and wretched. And he is preoccupied by her hands, sweeping to cover her face, as if her utter animal grief was something to be ashamed of, something that would ugly her features.

It does. He isn't so smitten to think she is just as pretty now than she was twenty minutes ago but, he thinks, that he may love her more now than then.

His hands speak the words for him as he pulls her into the circle of his arms- her hands still over her face- and it's not quite an embrace but they are close (the closest they will ever be).

Because she won't ever say it, not where he can hear it. The quiet whispers of I love you. He _knows_ he won't ever hear it.

But Mason has eternity.

Not the ending he wanted, but it isn't nothing.

(it might just be everything)

"_Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning---"_


	2. the fragility of forever

[author note: if this is how I see love, it's a small wonder why I am still single. Third part to follow.

She likes it when she's on top (she only plays when she's winning). Loves the way her hips can twist, slick with freedom. Loves that she can see all that she owns spread out before her (loves that she owns all of him). Likes the way he reaches up but can't wholly touch her.

She loves that he _still_ tries.

No one has ever tried so hard with her. (She's easy in all the ways boys like. But only after she's made you bleed and beg.)

_Mason's the begging sort._

** green light **

There's a funny sort of twist to her lips and he realizes it's a smile. Saddest smile he's ever seen. He won't touch- still - (and he is almost ironically still) but his eyes are filled with her and never leave her own. (And somehow that's worse than all the schoolboys that snatched parts of her, handfuls of innocence with meaty sweaty hands. Somehow it's worse when his eyes grab at her like molasses cause she knows when he turns away he's going to take everything.)

She's so bright he thinks, he tells her she burns. She thinks it's an odd sort of compliment but then those are the only ones that hold her. She's a student of the modern age, the inflections of careless world be damned apathy sound somehow sweet with her accent and almost smile. (She's pretending again and most nights he lets her.)

_Because Mason loves her._

_And Daisy loves that._

** green light **

Mason likes it best when it hurts. When his heart aches from the litany of maybe-never-again's that comes every time she slips from his arms.

And he is drunk on her, off her. Whispering kisses on her brow as she curls up into him- telling him she could never love him.

But the scratches on his back feel a lot like love (like the only love he's ever known.) So he catalogues the bruises like footprints in the sand, easily missed if the tide turns in the wrong way.

_And Daisy was always the first to move._

** green light **

She goes to England because it's small but in a too big sorta way.

(She goes to England because the stories he told made it sound pretty, and she had finally gotten him to stop calling her that.)

She goes to England because Daisy has loved before.

_And it burned her in every sense of the word. _

** green light **

The man is very nearly ninety, so when he reaps him he can't stop himself from asking if he knew her as the light show starts.

But the man is already lost, already gone, yet Mason stops him, and he holds him, and he begs him to whisper back some part of her past to him.

_Some part of her he can keep. _

But T.H. Williams walks into a garden like a lamb and he wants to scream at the lie of it, that pretty things are only that way to hide their sting.

He doesn't realize that he is screaming. Not until he gasps down a breath past his raw larynx.

_He had only wanted her to stay. _

** green light **

Sometimes she laughs like her heart is breaking.

Sometimes she thinks it has.

(but it's too late for last regrets)


End file.
